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Search Result for Label SOUND OF A HANDSHAKE
viewing 1 To 10 of 15 items
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12"
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SHAKE 016EP
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It's A Musical has made another magic world you can enter like a playhouse. Following their two full-length albums, Morr Music presents their EP Summer Break. Here, the summer is cold and dark and the playhouse is a strange one, colored by cool synthesizer sounds and dark moments where the drums punctuate the inseparable voices of Robert Kretzschmar and Ella Blixt. The lyrics tell the story of broken love with a strange lightness and speed that is almost acrobatic.
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CD
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SHAKE 015CD
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Since long before his debut album Celebrating Life (MORR 080CD/LP) was released in 2008, Borko has been one of the most influential stalwarts in Reykjavík's boiling music scene. He has been a key member of many Icelandic bands (Rúnk, FM Belfast, Skakkamanage, to name a few) but it is in his own music that he really emerges from the undercurrent with his distinctively personal brand of expressive pop music. The nature of this particular beast lies in Borko's keen sense of melodic sensibility, but what set's it apart from the pack is the infectious charm, which is something anyone who has ever seen him play live can attest to. Borko has toured the world with both múm and Seabear and is known for his warm-hearted and downright neighborly stage presence. His newest handiwork is Born to Be Free. It offers everything one could ask of Borko. This album manages to be both calm and complex at the same time without having to tread any thin line. Songs like the title song and "The Final Round" are an energetic comment on urban life, while the final song "Sing to the World" is a universal anthem. There is a sense of charismatic vibrancy which juxtaposes perfectly with the intricate nature of Borko's carefully-crafted music.
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LP
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SHAKE 015LP
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LP version. Since long before his debut album Celebrating Life (MORR 080CD/LP) was released in 2008, Borko has been one of the most influential stalwarts in Reykjavík's boiling music scene. He has been a key member of many Icelandic bands (Rúnk, FM Belfast, Skakkamanage, to name a few) but it is in his own music that he really emerges from the undercurrent with his distinctively personal brand of expressive pop music. The nature of this particular beast lies in Borko's keen sense of melodic sensibility, but what set's it apart from the pack is the infectious charm, which is something anyone who has ever seen him play live can attest to. Borko has toured the world with both múm and Seabear and is known for his warm-hearted and downright neighborly stage presence. His newest handiwork is Born to Be Free. It offers everything one could ask of Borko. This album manages to be both calm and complex at the same time without having to tread any thin line. Songs like the title song and "The Final Round" are an energetic comment on urban life, while the final song "Sing to the World" is a universal anthem. There is a sense of charismatic vibrancy which juxtaposes perfectly with the intricate nature of Borko's carefully-crafted music. Includes mp3 download.
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SHAKE 013LP
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LP version. Kira Kira is the alias of Icelandic composer and audio/visual artist Kristin Björk Kristjansdottir, and her album Feathermagnetik is her third release. As a founding member of Kitchen Motors, a mischievous label and collective based on experiments in electronic music and the arts, she continually breaks boundaries between forms and genres through a repertoire that includes compositions for theater, film, dance and art installations -- as well as playful multi-disciplinary productions that exceed her work as merely a composer. Her first feature film as director and screenwriter, Grandma Lo-Fi -- The Basement Tapes Of Sigridur Nielsdottir has been celebrated at New York's Museum of Modern Art, SXSW and a plethora of other festivals around the world. When Kira Kira wrote the first notes of Feathermagnetik, she was in between homes: stranded in an icy Berlin winter, re-figuring seemingly figured-out things anew, questioning old belongings and longings and opening up to a vast new terrain. The album reflects this impulse to re-assemble lost parts and to give in to the process of transformation and re-orientation in a new and unexplored place. It is a manifestation of the strength and imperative of friendship at times of change when Kira Kira set out all her antennas to map out the firmament of this record with her friends as coordinates and lights in the night. A wild array of amazing musicians appear on Feathermagnetik, which was created in Berlin, Reykjavik and in the Ulappa studio on Finnish island Suomenlinna, headquarters of Kristin's closest collaborator, percussion wizard Samuli Kosminen, who mixed and produced the album with her as well as playing custom-made percussion, psaltery and taisho koto harp. Finnish violin wonder Pekka Kuusisto whistles, hums and pumps an old harmonium organ, Borgar Magnason, an active force with the Bedroom Community label, brings a beastly yet tender quality of rumble and drone to the mix; trumpeteer Eirikur Orri Olafsson, another of Kristin's closest collaborators, plays a big role on the record, layering gorgeous horns and whistles. Kitchen Motors co-conspirator Hilmar Jensson plays guitar, Finnish musicians Heikki Nikula and Jarmo Saari play contrabass clarinet and Theremin, German photographer Antje Taiga Jandrig lends a vocal presence on the closing piece of the album and Petur Hallgrimsson plays lapsteel. Feathermagnetik is crafted with Kristin's uncompromising surrender to emotions as a compass and music as a plane to either fly or float in bewildering places full of gloomy desires and graceful explorers who wander through their beguiling environment with tender curiosity. Includes a download code for bonus audio and video content.
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SHAKE 013CD
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Kira Kira is the alias of Icelandic composer and audio/visual artist Kristin Björk Kristjansdottir, and her album Feathermagnetik is her third release. As a founding member of Kitchen Motors, a mischievous label and collective based on experiments in electronic music and the arts, she continually breaks boundaries between forms and genres through a repertoire that includes compositions for theater, film, dance and art installations -- as well as playful multi-disciplinary productions that exceed her work as merely a composer. Her first feature film as director and screenwriter, Grandma Lo-Fi -- The Basement Tapes Of Sigridur Nielsdottir has been celebrated at New York's Museum of Modern Art, SXSW and a plethora of other festivals around the world. When Kira Kira wrote the first notes of Feathermagnetik, she was in between homes: stranded in an icy Berlin winter, re-figuring seemingly figured-out things anew, questioning old belongings and longings and opening up to a vast new terrain. The album reflects this impulse to re-assemble lost parts and to give in to the process of transformation and re-orientation in a new and unexplored place. It is a manifestation of the strength and imperative of friendship at times of change when Kira Kira set out all her antennas to map out the firmament of this record with her friends as coordinates and lights in the night. A wild array of amazing musicians appear on Feathermagnetik, which was created in Berlin, Reykjavik and in the Ulappa studio on Finnish island Suomenlinna, headquarters of Kristin's closest collaborator, percussion wizard Samuli Kosminen, who mixed and produced the album with her as well as playing custom-made percussion, psaltery and taisho koto harp. Finnish violin wonder Pekka Kuusisto whistles, hums and pumps an old harmonium organ, Borgar Magnason, an active force with the Bedroom Community label, brings a beastly yet tender quality of rumble and drone to the mix; trumpeteer Eirikur Orri Olafsson, another of Kristin's closest collaborators, plays a big role on the record, layering gorgeous horns and whistles. Kitchen Motors co-conspirator Hilmar Jensson plays guitar, Finnish musicians Heikki Nikula and Jarmo Saari play contrabass clarinet and Theremin, German photographer Antje Taiga Jandrig lends a vocal presence on the closing piece of the album and Petur Hallgrimsson plays lapsteel. Feathermagnetik is crafted with Kristin's uncompromising surrender to emotions as a compass and music as a plane to either fly or float in bewildering places full of gloomy desires and graceful explorers who wander through their beguiling environment with tender curiosity. Includes a download code for bonus audio and video content.
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2CD
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SHAKE 012CD
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These two concerts B. Fleischmann recorded complement each other and interlock quite smoothly and organically, lifting you up when the other is pulling you down and vice versa. The first track "For M - A Tribute To Mark Linkous" was recorded in May 2010 at Klangboden Mödling: Austrian angst might still be no option for a Weltanschauung, but there is a certain unease at work in the beginning, pushing down the strings and the cautious guitar loops. The entire piece is a musical obituary for the man who started Sparklehorse and shot himself only a few weeks prior to this very concert. While Fleischmann takes care of electronics, guitar and omnichord, as he usually does, he was joined on stage by Matthias Frey (violin, snare), Martin Siewert (guitar, lap-steel, bass, electronics), and Alexandr Vatagin (bass, electronics, cello). The resulting 45+ minutes of commemoration, initiated by B. for the late M., so to speak, is a dark yet glistening pile of leaves, in which the musicians repeatedly return to the bass line, the key note, the pulse, the "why," to all those existential questions about the end we all have to face one day. Question marks in the shape of a soaring lap-steel guitar appear on top of beats that turn and squeak, softly, like an extended lament, a form of rebellion, a consultation of yet more instruments, wondering and meandering in unison, until it all gives way to a swooshing noise, a threat to crush the listener from the inside, gnawing, biting, then resolve at last: harmony, harmonies, a shadow of zest, faith. Although he has contributed vocals now and then in the past, our man from Vienna remains silent for the second track as well, focusing on ambience alone: "Mikro_Kosmos," a solo piece, was recorded in June 2010 at "Festival Irritationen II." Like scoundrels in striped rags, a bunch of sounds appear on the quiet, two of them and a third hidden in the underbrush keeping watch, yet the electronic fetters soon get a hold of them, and a pool is filled with swirling, creaking textures, sliding downwards under a long note, long and wide like a horizon of dark clouds. "Mikro_Kosmos" is a spectacle of nature, a self-renewing environment populated by wraithlike creatures. In the middle part, Fleischmann's guitar takes the lead, runs wild, things are head over heels all of a sudden, there's beating and elopement, until we hear new paws on the ground, and the playing field is ready to be cluttered up once again: grow, thrive, wither, fade away, be eaten, until the next breakup sets this little world on fire.
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CD
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SHAKE 011CD
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Originally a string quartet formed by four girls at the Reykjavík College of Music in the 1990s, Amiina went on to cut their teeth as Sigur Rós' string section for the next decade. Now a sextet after a recent masculine infusion, Amiina presents their second full length album, Puzzle. Amiina's debut album, Kurr (2007), was performed on a disparate jumble of instruments -- musical saws, kalimbas, music boxes and seemingly anything that could be plucked, bowed or beaten on -- resulting in a work that ebbed and flowed "in a strange, powerful place between sophistication and innocence," according to The Guardian (UK). While the above is equally true of Puzzle, this time around the group's sonic palette is broadened by the contributions of drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and electronic artist Kippi Kaninus, permanent members of the group since 2009. Accordingly, the songs on Puzzle are more rhythmically rugged than Amiina's previous work and feature heavier use of electronics. Amiina's long-standing fondness for zero-g melodies and open-minded instrumentation, however, continues.
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SHAKE 011LP
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LP version. Originally a string quartet formed by four girls at the Reykjavík College of Music in the 1990s, Amiina went on to cut their teeth as Sigur Rós' string section for the next decade. Now a sextet after a recent masculine infusion, Amiina presents their second full length album, Puzzle. Amiina's debut album, Kurr (2007), was performed on a disparate jumble of instruments -- musical saws, kalimbas, music boxes and seemingly anything that could be plucked, bowed or beaten on -- resulting in a work that ebbed and flowed "in a strange, powerful place between sophistication and innocence," according to The Guardian (UK). While the above is equally true of Puzzle, this time around the group's sonic palette is broadened by the contributions of drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and electronic artist Kippi Kaninus, permanent members of the group since 2009. Accordingly, the songs on Puzzle are more rhythmically rugged than Amiina's previous work and feature heavier use of electronics. Amiina's long-standing fondness for zero-g melodies and open-minded instrumentation, however, continues. Includes MP3 download.
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CD
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SHAKE 008CD
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This is the debut EP by Sóley Stefánsdóttir, a girl from Reykjavík, student of composition and a member of the highly-acclaimed Icelandic indie-collective Seabear. Theater Island is the debut of a singer and a dreamer: 6 songs held together by Sóley's piano and her voice -- because every one of her compositions comes into being while she is singing to the piano. She uses a lot of other instruments though: strings, guitars or just some electronic crackles and noises. The record opens with "Duttla," a dotty and strange song that is followed by the engrossed and nearly impressionistic "Kill The Clown." From now on, the songs become more and more catchy. The title-track is in keeping with Seabear's open-hearted indie-folk while "Blue Leaves" and "Read The Book" are touching pop ballads -- and the record's finale "We Will Put Her In Two Graves" is absolutely disarming in its simplicity. But there's something vague and unreal that sticks to all of these songs as well. This applies to the lyrics, too: Like Alice, Sóley walks through her very own wonderland where things happen that can only occur in the surreal logic of a dream.
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LP
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SHAKE 006LP
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Vinyl release. Released in conjunction with their second album We Built A Fire (MORR 097CD/CD-LTD/LP), While The Fire Dies EP brings you the vinyl version of the six tracks that are on CD2 of the limited 2CD version of the We Built A Fire album (MORR 097CD-LTD). Seabear started as the solo-project of Sindri Már Sigfússon (aka Sin Fang Bous) and meanwhile has become a creative collective of seven Icelandic musicians. While the album showcases Seabear's wide range of styles and influences from indie-rock to intense balladry, the While The Fire Dies EP focuses more on the band's folky and laid-back side. The country-esque uptempo opener "Pocket Knife" is followed by alternate acoustic versions of the Seabear classics "Arms" and "Singing Arc" as well as the perfect Seabear-ballad "Bright House." After a short country twang interlude ("Leafmask II"), this EP ends with "Doctor," a string-dominated elegy and a perfect epilogue to both: album and EP.
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